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Chapter 8: Mint Map
“Yes, that could work.”
I would have taken one of my shoes, but my genius had decided to go barefoot. My clothes wouldn’t make enough noise, so I had only one option. I quietly clipped off the damaged casing part of my prosthesis and started swinging.
The metal scraps elicited a dazed grunt from one of the guards while the other searched for the source.
I tossed the piece of hardwood alloy to the ground behind me and let go of the pipe. While the guards threw their heads back to check the sound, I pushed off the high door frame and jumped into the darkness ahead.
A smooth roll ensured a relatively soft landing, and I sneaked my way through the factory.
“At least my barefootedness helps me now.” I crept across the hallways to the lab area, the cool metal grating pressing into my soles.
The Twin’s moonlight creaked through the sparse ceiling windows, revealing columns of dust.
“Breathing that stuff daily can't be healthy.”
I arrived in the area of the mint extractors. Rows of unfamiliar animals hung from hooks, their snake-like skins littered with deep cuts to bleed them dry. Even creepier, the hall stretched longer than I could see in the darkness.
“How many corpses . . . dozens? Hundreds? Indeed, Finn, ‘poor animals.’”
A beam of double moonlight with floating dust swirling separated me from the pool of mint-green blood. Behind it were baskets containing sawed-off, jagged horns with spirallings, various patterns, and needle-thin claws.
“What are these? If I didn't know better, I'd say they were strange baby dragons without wings, but dragons are a myth, so . . . a big lizard? Would explain their green blood.”
I wandered through the rows, something in here giving me ominous vibes. The ambiance didn’t inject the feeling of a slaughterhouse. It didn’t smell much different than the other factory sections.
“The smell . . .”
Or rather, the lack of any smell. The animals didn’t smell like carcasses, and the blood had barely a hint of mint.
“What are you?” I guided my hand over their dead skin. Fine lines separated the overlapping sturdy scales. I tapped them.
“No way.” My heart sent a pulse through my whole body.
I knocked against them. Their skin felt iron solid, no, even denser than the black steel bar I stole from a noble house. The mere idea of armor, let alone weapons, made of this material, let the drool run out of my mouth.
“No . . . a prosthesis made of it . . . “ A deep desire arose in me to dismantle the whole factory and make the best equipment. Iron taste spread in my mouth. I had not even noticed how much I bit my lip.
“Under The Dawn Sea.”—I wiped my mouth—“Just wait.”
—
Next, I lock-picked the door to one of the laboratories to find a mess of a room. Parchment was scattered everywhere, some with sketches I couldn't understand, others with protocols.
“I wonder if the Jade Mask could help reading in the dark.”
I picked some parchments and read them in the moonlight outside the laboratory.
‘Experiment: 21, the subjects, two middle-aged men with severe scurvy, responded to both drinking and skin application of Jade Mint Mixture 4. While the skin application quickly cured the yellow skin, the internal symptoms remained more persistent. On the other hand, drinking showed great success with the symptoms and later a slight change in skin tone.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
‘Experiment: 33, the subject, a young adult female with no significant illnesses, came into direct contact with Jade Mint, Mixture 5, via a minor flesh wound. A strong rejection reaction resulted in violent convulsions and vomiting. Her skin around the wound rippled like scales. Loss of vision after 30 seconds, loss of hearing after 1 minute . . . the subject died of organ failure within two minutes.‘
“What the hell . . .”
I pocketed the parchments for my Journal and went to another section.
‘. . . Jade Mint, Mixture 1, isn’t compatible with any other Mixtures, but reacts strongly to magnets . . .’
‘. . . Pure Jade Mint rejects the following minerals: copper, iron, lead, silver, gold, bronze, nickel, quartz, zinc, calcium, . . .’
Footsteps echoed outside. The urge to read through it all almost defeated my common sense but slipped back before anyone could catch me, however, not before stuffing another stack of parchment in my pockets.
More guards patrolled than on the way there, so I had to detour across the higher metal walkways.
A light shone in the distance, near where Nita and I had broken in.
“Alright, last inspection . . . for tonight.”
The corridor to the light had a carpeted floor and a soft railing. A balcony-like room with an entire glass wall became apparent. It provided a good overview of the majority of the factory. I sneaked slower. A man in noble etiquette stood inside; back turned to me.
”I thought glass panes this size always broke during manufacturing?”
I couldn’t make out much in the poorly lit room. Candles scattered on the wide desk in front of the man. And piles of parchment stacked on both the desk and the ground. To one side was a half-filled bookshelf. The man wasn’t looking at his desk. He looked at a map above it that stretched almost the entire wall.
“Woah. The amount of work to draw that—it must cost a fortune . . . almost like Mum and Dad’s . . .”
Peeling my eyes off the hard-to-see drawing took time, but I couldn’t do anything without breaking in or the Jade Mask. I considered retrieving it—when the man inside the office turned around.
My heart thumped in my ears. My body froze in chills.
“Can he see me?”
His silhouette didn’t move. There was no way to tell.
Slowly, very slowly, I walked backward on the carpeted floor. I fought the fear that the man might hear my loud heartbeat, but the doubts came in droves. Two greenish glints grew on the man's face, and my throat went dry.
The glints turned to glows, and the glows became lights. I gulped, but the dryness sat deep.
Flash.
His eyes radiated in jade.
The moment he moved, I ran for my life, the carpet muffling my steps.
I didn’t know if he chased me or if anyone else saw me. I just kept running, running from—a lot. From the bloodlust in the air. From the suppressed guilt of screwing up after disregarding Nita's words. And from this urge, deep inside me: to put my life on the line. To go back and investigate this damn office.
“Nita!” I whispered ghastly. “Wake up!” My heart still pounded to no end.
She moaned awake when she recognized my face and surveyed our surroundings. “What's wrong?”
“I found it, I found it!”
“Found what?”
“The map, of course!”
—
Glass shattered.
“What are you doing?!” A guard bellowed.
“I’m so sorry!”
Nita winced at the sudden yell. The last few days have been stressful. The mission had finally entered the next phase, and now it was up to Nita not to screw it up. That I had gone through the factory against her will must have aggravated her.
I had taken a bigger risk than she had wanted, she wasn't happy with me, but she couldn't blame me since I had returned unseen and with important information. The burden, the need to succeed for her crew, prevented her from taking the necessary risks. One of the reasons I had initially planned to work alone—friends weigh you down . . .
The guard kept yelling at Nita for dropping a pallet with filled cartridges. Frankly, I couldn't see his behavior as unreasonable. She had just dropped a fortune, at least for ordinary people.
The commotion didn't go unnoticed, and the jerk guard from yesterday joined in with Nita's bullying. It snapped at me when they went from name-calling to pushing her around and slapping her.
I vaulted over the conveyor belt, helped Nita up, and faced the guard.
“Get back to work, landlubber!” He poked me with his index finger. I didn’t budge.
He frowned deeply and lunged for another slap.
I placed my prosthetic hand on his shoulder, thumb missing. Instead, a thick needle pressed against his throat, drawing blood. “Careful.”
He gulped.
“Just wait until Captain Alvar finds out about this,” he scoffed.
Alvar?
The name triggered a complicated chain of emotions, twisting slowly in my guts.
“Screw off.” I pushed him back with enough force that he collided with his comrades.
“He surely hates me to the bone now. Nita probably hates me, too.”
I plugged my thumb back on and turned to Nita. “You okay?”
“You shouldn’t have done this,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“But now I've forced you to make a move. And even if you don’t tag along tonight, I’ll definitely break into the office. Alvar . . . how many share that name? It can’t be you, right, Dad?”